John Krasinski Cast as Lead in Michael Bay’s ’13 Hours’

John Krasinski, best known for his role on TV’s The Office, has been cast as the lead in director Michael Bay’s adaptation of Mitchell Zuckoff’s book about the Benghazi attack that left a U.S. ambassador dead. He will play Jack Silva, the pseudonym used in Zuckoff’s book for the leader of the six-man security team that defended the compound.

The movie is based on Zuckoff’s book titled 13 Hours: The Inside Account of What Really Happened in Benghazi, which was co-written with the six security men who were inside the office at the time and whom the book and movie are about. The book depicts the events of the 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, which killed US Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and U.S. Foreign Service Information Management Officer Sean Smith on the evening of September 11. Stevens’ death was the first death of an on-duty US ambassador since 1979.

Michael Bay (Pearl Harbor, The Transformers franchise) is directing the movie which, as the title suggests, will most likely focus on the 13 hours spent defending the compound against the Islamic militants who attacked, though the book expands to cover the political controversies that were a result of the attack. The movie is still in development at Paramount, and as such, has no set release date yet.

Krasinski has been building up a large film resume, including Promised Land with Matt Damon and Leatherheads with George Clooney, and will next appear in the untitled Cameron Crowe movie set to be released in May of this year, which also stars Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone (readers can find out more about it here).